


Our place on the path unwinding

by Amemait, This Girl Is (non_sequential)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Beltane, Community: hds_beltane, GFY, Humour, M/M, Romance, a cast of thousands of OCs, making out against trees, sekrit trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4430987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait, https://archiveofourown.org/users/non_sequential/pseuds/This%20Girl%20Is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter goes looking for a fight and finds one. And possibly some other things along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our place on the path unwinding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vix_spes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vix_spes/gifts).



> This was written for Vix_Spes for the final HDS Beltane. From her prompts, I took one look at the Edinburgh Beltane Festival and ran with it, with a light sprinkling of things from her ‘likes’ list. Sadly, I ran out of time for smut, but you can use your imaginations. :oD
> 
> A lot of the word count was me, but Bakaknight was invaluable in putting together a lot of the plot, and most of the funny bits, although she keeps trying to deny it. This wouldn't have got written without her. Or without the encouragement of Curi and Kiss, for that matter.
> 
> No, I'm not telling you what the Sekrit Trope is, that would defeat the purpose of it being Sekrit. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Whilst I was much inspired by Vix Spes’s link to images of the [Beltane Fire Society](https://beltanefiresociety.wordpress.com/), I have never actually attended it, and the event as it unfolds here is entirely made up. 
> 
> Brief warning: There is a situation involving some racist people, and racist slurs are used

One day Harry was going to be able to get through a month without nearly getting himself fired for making a workmate cry. Sadly, that month was not going to be _this_ month.

He really had to get a hold of himself, before people started asking questions. (At least more pointed questions than, ‘What the _hell_ , Harry?’) The good thing was, he knew what he could do about it. The bad thing was there was only one thing that really seemed to help. (Sadly, _getting a hold of himself_ wasn’t very helpful, although he’d certainly tried.)

So he went home ( _sent_ home by Cho - and he’d damn nearly snarled in her face - like a kid being sent to the naughty corner), exchanged his robes for jeans and a top so tight he always worried a bit for the seams, and his glasses for contacts. It was probably a more memorable outfit than he should have gone for when he wanted to be forgotten, but there were ways that could be… managed.

He decided to Apparate around a few major centres and see if he could find a big Muggle party. Between sporting events, music events, and university students, there was always something big happening somewhere in the Muggle world, and where there was something big happening, there were people getting pissed and being arseholes. It was a bit depressing, actually, how many arseholes there were in the world when you started looking. Whether it was pulling the wing mirrors off someone’s car, or thinking that because they told a girl they’d like to shag her she was obliged to let them, there was always someone out there begging for a fist in the face. And these days, Harry had a driving urge to oblige them.

Bristol was the first stop, but there was nothing much going on there where he wouldn’t be too conspicuously out of place. (The football was usually good for a fight, especially if it was City vs Rovers, but both teams were playing away that weekend.) Birmingham was a bust, Manchester was mellow, and eventually Harry found himself in Edinburgh. It was starting to get dark when he Apparated into the park around Holyrood, and stood stock still as the sound of drums came from somewhere not too far off. There were cheers and the sound of lots of people, and the wind carried hints of alcohol and kerosene.

Perfect.

It took a few minutes and a few narrow misses with cars on the road to get there, and when he did the crowd was huge and very very strange. There were people dressed casually in jeans and jackets, and people who were… blue? He blinked a couple of times to clear his eyes, but no, there were definitely blue people. He sniffed the air - there was the odd hint of magic on the air, but mostly it was all Muggles. Nonetheless there were people who were blue, and people who had horns, people breathing fire, and people covered head to toe in flowers, and that was just what he could see in a quick glance.

He moved around the crowd (you could usually find arseholes at the edges) toward the front. The procession was being led by a woman all in white with a crown of flowers, and a man in gree- oh. The May Queen and the Green Man. He did a quick tot up of the days in his head. Beltane. Apparently he’d already got more used to counting by the moon than by the days on a calendar - he’d completely lost track.

The May Queen was escorted by people in white and people in red- actually, make that people in red _paint_ and sod all else. People in green surrounded the Green Man as they all followed the path up the hill.

Of the people in the crowd, a large number were already drunk, which was helpful. Hardly anybody would notice him (good), and if they did they could blame their subsequent lack of memory of the incident on booze (better).

There was a lot more fire than he was entirely used to - people carrying torches and staves that they twirled above their heads, and small bonfires all along the way (and without a single controlling charm that Harry could tell).

All he had to do now was find that special someone who was just begging to get their daylights punched out. With this many drunk Muggles around, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

Harry dodged around a group of... he resolutely decided to call them ‘brave revelers’, because ‘unexpected half naked body paint fetishists’ was a bit too much of a mental mouthful, to follow what was happening at the front, where a group in black and gold had halted the progress of the procession. He managed not to growl when someone bumped into him.

“Hey there, gorgeous,” the person, a guy, said in a thick Midlands accent.

That it was slightly better than ‘all hail the Boy Who Lived’, was about all that could be said for it, as a line. Harry smiled politely, and started to back away slowly.

“Wow, you are just perfect. Wow." The 'brave reveler' grasped his arm and looked him up and down. Dark curly hair stood straight upward from a band above his face, which was currently a vivid shade of violet, as was the rest of his body down to the shiny leather trousers. “Very nice."

Apart from the hold on his arm, there was nothing remotely threatening about him, but the way he was looking at Harry, not even lustfully, just assessing, sent the hairs on the back of his neck up in a way that was as much human as it was wolf. He wondered if this was what Ginny meant when she talked about guys in clubs, and Hermione, Angelina, and Luna all nodded in sympathy while the boys tried to work out what was so terrible about these guys. He could suddenly appreciate how hard it was to articulate the unsettled feeling he had, despite the guy doing nothing wrong.

The Violet Reveler let go of Harry's arm to clap his hands excitedly. He even bounced a bit, and Harry relaxed. "So!" the guy said, a broad smile almost glowing white against his purple face. "Hi. My name’s Jono. Want to help me win a bet?”

“A... bet?” What?

“Okay my flatmate, he’s really cute. But he hasn’t gotten laid in like five months or something. Anyway, my girlfriend bet me that I couldn’t get him laid on Beltane. You in, man?”

“No, thank you,” Harry said once he’d gotten his brain working again. “I don’t do random hookups.” That ought to put a damper on whoever this was, except that this time that line completely failed.

“Somebody bothering you, Jono?”

Harry froze, and turned slowly. He damn well knew that voice.

Draco Malfoy, eyes outlined heavily in black, blond hair spiked up with probably-Muggle hair product, and wearing barely more than his friend - Jono - was, sauntered up to the two of them and to his credit did not do a double-take when he noticed Harry.

“Hey there, Dragon. So, I totally found you a date for tonight-”

“Jono, we’ve been over this. I’m not looking for a date for tonight.”

Harry revised his opinion. Draco Malfoy seemed not to recognise Harry at all. Sure, he’d gotten his hair under a little bit of control since then, but he was hardly likely to be mistaken for anybody else. So maybe this wasn’t actually Malfoy? Just some other person, who happened to look exactly like him and had a friend who was cheerfully calling him ‘Dragon’. Just because he hadn’t seen or heard about Malfoy in years didn’t necessarily mean he was out living in a flat with Muggles who called him Dragon and took him out to a Beltane festival where apparently people got half-naked, got fully drunk, and got laid at some point in the evening.

Actually, the more Harry turned that sentence over in his head, the less and less likely it seemed that it actually was Draco Malfoy he was talking with. What were the statistics somebody – Hermione, probably – had mentioned to him? Somewhere in the world there were six other people alive who looked exactly like you? Clearly, he’d just happened to meet Malfoy’s doppleganger.

“But look at him, he’s exactly your type!” Jono wailed, waving a purple hand in Harry’s direction.

Dracoganger folded his arms. “We’ve been over this as well, Jono. I don’t have a type, so why don't you leave the... nice man alone." The pause was barely perceptible, but it was definitely there if you were even half-expecting it. Seven people in the world who all looked the same, Harry reminded himself. Out of seven, there no real reason to think this one was Draco Malfoy.

From the front of the procession there was a cry, startlingly loud, as the May Queen apparently defeated the leader of the Black and Gold people and stood, her head thrown back and arm raised in triumph.

“Fine, Dragon. So if you’re not going to sleep with him, can I at least tell Mike about him?”

Dracoganger shook his head. “Certainly not. If you do that I’ll just have to Obliviate the pair of you,” he said as though that was a sentence that you could say around Muggles, as though that was ‘no big thing’.

Jono gave him a grin. “You keep saying shit like that man, and then you wonder why nobody sticks around long enough for more than one shag.”

Harry took a small step backwards as Dracoganger rolled his eyes goodnaturedly, seeing an opportunity to get away from this awkward conversation and get back to the business at hand, but Malfoy-a-like's hand flashed out. He grabbed Harry around the wrist - why were these people so grabby? - to prevent his attempt to leave. Jono kept grinning. “I’ll tell Mike and Sandy I won the bet then?”

“Oh, by all means, why not. I’ll pay up, don’t worry. Or just Obliviate all three of you.” Dracoganger replied, and Harry had just about had enough of this.

“I’m not going to shag you,” he announced flatly. Dracoganger nodded.

“Alas, my broken heart. Never mind. The aim of the bet was to get me to be interested in shagging somebody, not necessarily to get laid tonight." He smirked, and it was almost as familiar to Harry as Weasley-red hair and, bizarrely, almost as comforting, if the urge to split someone’s lip could be called _comforting_. “Having a conversation with you ought to be better than spending the evening making pottery, at least.”

Definitely the actual and for real Malfoy. There went that happy delusion. “I’m sure you don’t mean your words in bad faith,” he snapped back. It wasn't the wittiest thing he'd ever said, but his fists were itching, and in any case Draco just nodded.

"Perhaps we should... talk," Draco said, in a way that probably suggested screwing to Jono, but to Harry suggested punching. It was what he was here for, but somehow the idea of punching Draco's smug face wasn't as satisfying as it used to be.

“Yeah,” Harry said, if only to get the flatmate out of the way. “Sure.” And once they’d finished talking, Harry could Obliviate Draco Malfoy of this particular meeting, and hope like hell he’d be inclined to chalk the whole experience up to copious amounts of alcohol when his flatmates inevitably mentioned it the next day.

Jono cheered, and pulled out a mobile from Merlin only knew where, because Harry wasn’t going to speculate, while Draco pulled Harry by the wrist a little to the side, nearer the shadows off the main path than anywhere else.

Harry sniffed the air for any sign that there was anyone in earshot. He was all too aware of the damage that could be done by someone even partially overhearing something that wasn’t meant for their ears. 

There was a rabbit warren nearby, and further off a badger sett, but the humans were all in the crowd, and no one seemed to be minding them. 

“What the hell are you doing living with Muggles, Malfoy?” Harry asked. One thing he’d learned from dealing with Centaurs for the newly-christened Department for Relations and Co-operation with Magical Creatures was that getting in with the first question gave you control of the whole conversation. 

“I have a better question for you, Potter. Since when were you a werewolf?”

Harry growled in the back of his throat. Of course, the other person could always pull the rug out from under you. “I asked first,” he pointed out, managing to sound as reasonable as it was possible to sound while being a werewolf under the waxing gibbous moon who’d just been asked a very personal question.

Draco rolled his eyes. “I’m living with Muggles because they have access to a great many forms of entertainment and whenever faced with something of a magical provenance, they react by saying ‘Cool’ or ‘Right on then, mate’ or words to that effect. They don’t bloody care who my family was. Oh, and because some right git in the Ministry decided to quarantine all my family’s property in an effort to dig out every last trace that You-Know-Who might possibly have left in any part of the place, despite them having already done that something like ten times. I haven’t had a home for something approaching two years now, Harry Potter, and you still haven’t answered my question. When’d you get bitten?”

“How can you even _know_?” It wasn’t so much that Harry was evading the question (he was a bit), as that no one outside a select few friends and Healers knew anything about it. His run-in with a dumb kid first-moon werewolf who’d been so deep in denial he hadn’t even tried to get hold of any Wolfsbane potion before the full moon was a _very_ close-kept secret, so it was alarming that Draco Malfoy, of _all people_ , could apparently just pluck it out of thin air.

“I appreciate that you were otherwise occupied at the time,” Draco drawled, looking at his well-manicured nails, “But I believe you were aware that _You-Know-Perfectly-Bloody-Well-Who_ and his entourage spent rather a lot of time at the Manor, and that said entourage included the ever-delightful Fenrir Greyback and friends?” He looked up at Harry, grey gaze sharp. “There may not be any convenient physiological signs of a werewolf, but there are little tics if one knows what to look for. And I am unfortunate enough to have been, shall I say, _uniquely placed_ to learn what some of them look like.” 

The May Queen's party passed above them in another loop of the hill. At the summit a dim light brightened, illuminating an arch. Down in the field, mushroom-shaped lights appeared, to much excitement from the kids who were still around.

Draco leaned in close to Harry, and Harry began to wonder if he'd badly misread Draco's intentions.

"Look, Malfoy," Harry started, but Draco spoke over him, too quietly to be casually overheard, but almost sinister in intensity.

"I don't know why you're here, Potter, and I don't care. I have walked away from everything I ever knew and started over entirely once already, and I will not let you ruin this for me."

"I'm not _here_ for you, Malfoy," Harry snarled back. Something in the back of his mind was cringing at how aggressive he was being, but the moon was gibbous, and the wolf was wild, and Draco Malfoy got him worked up like no one else ever had, or hopefully ever would. "I have no interest in ruining anything for you, as long as you don't ruin my night." Not that his night could really _be_ ruined, but there was no way he was going to explain anything to Draco sodding Malfoy.

They were almost nose to nose - Jono the purple flatmate was probably eating it up. Up the hill there was chorus of jeers and derisive hoots, most probably from the red people, from what he'd seen of them.

"I have less than no interest in _your night_ , Potter, as long as you stay out of my way." Draco's sneer sat more forcefully on his adult face than it had as a teenager, there was less empty posturing and more genuine conviction. The wolf wanted to bloody it, but even if Draco was living in exile, Harry couldn't really risk getting into it with a wizard again if he wanted to avoid a level of scrutiny he couldn't withstand. He _really_ needed to punch someone, and it needed to be someone who wouldn't recognise him.

Harry pulled back and pasted on as big a grin as he could manage. Draco looked gratifyingly startled. "Grand!" Harry said, and pulled some kind of made-up bow based loosely on what he could remember of dancing lessons from McGonagall all those years ago. "Have a nice life!" He turned on his heel and headed off around the hill in search of someone to make his night.

This side of the hill was darker, despite being nearer the road. He probably shouldn't be climbing the hill widdershins, really, for all it was a Muggle celebration and not a real magical one. Sometimes, with magic, all you needed was the right steps to the dance. The last thing he needed was to get mixed up in a Beltane rite going wrong. Ahead, in the dark, a girl screeched and Harry stopped sharply to listen, but there was laughter as well, good-natured and slightly drunk, and the screech had lacked the edge of panic that meant it was for real.

He carried on towards the ruckus anyway, just to make sure.

In the shade of a cluster of trees, a small knot of red people were pushing and shoving at each other, but it was good-natured, from what he could see. It took a moment to realise that what he could see was pretty nearly everything - in body paint and thongs they even made Jono look over-dressed. (A little voice in the back of his head that sounded rather like Molly Weasley wondered if they weren't _cold_.) One of the women grabbed another by the arm, laughing, as she tugged the other one up close and kissed her. A guy threw his arms up and cheered, and one of the kissing women gave him the finger before flailing a hand out at him to pull him in. He went, and pulled the two remaining people with him, and then was kissing and rubbing, and more hands than Harry could keep track of.

Harry shook his head to clear it. Everything was fine here, and they didn't need him perving on them like a creeper.

From the front of the hill came an ululating cry that he was hard-pressed not to answer with his own, and another light came on up at the top. He cut up the hill, crossing several loops of the procession path to get higher. He was beginning to get frustrated with how well behaved the crowd was.

The crowd was thicker at the front of the hill, and from further up he could see the way it ebbed and flowed. There was a wide circle around a group of fire dancers with staves and chains. Even from up here it was almost mesmerising, the way they twisted and spun around each other to the beat of a group of drummers who formed their own circle a short distance from the dancers.

He was so caught up in it, he almost didn't notice the group of lads not far from him, but a laugh with a nasty edge caught his ears. 'Lads' was the right word. They had beer bottles in hand, and were wearing flip-flops and polo shirts, some of them with the collars popped.

"Ah, c'mon, chocolate button, gies a kiss!" one slurred.

"Why're ye wearin' a handkerchief on yer head, lass, d'ye nae know it's fer yer nose?" another contributed.

Harry looked closer at the group, and saw that they were closed in around a pretty brown-skinned girl in a bright pink hijab. Her face looked properly pissed off, and her fists were clenched, but she was still a good bit shorter than any of the boys around her, and outnumbered five to one, and her shoulders were hunched - Harry's shoulders almost ached in sympathy - against the blow to come.

This. _This_ was what he was here for.

"Oi, shit for brains," he called, careful to inject just enough scorn into his voice to get their backs well up. "You too scared to get into it with someone your own size?"

They swung around to face him, almost as one, faces a priceless mix of bafflement and outrage.

"What the fuck's it tae dae wi' you, short-arse?" the tallest one demanded. "We're just havin' a friendly wee chat wi' yon lassie, so why dae ye no mind your own fookin business?"

"Sorry that your dicks are as small as your brains," Harry said, braced and ready for the first fist to come his way. "But there’s nothing friendly about the way you’re insulting her, so-” The anticipated fist ended his sentence there. 

The boys liked to act tough, but it was quickly clear that they weren’t used to actual fighting, probably tending to rely on intimidation and numbers. Two of them went for him at the same time, but all Harry had to do was twist side on and grab their shirts to propel them past him and straight into each other with a satisfying crunch. Two of the others rallied, and came at him from each side. The other guy seemed to have drunk too much to work out which direction to attack, and was wandering off. 

It wasn’t the sort of dust-up he saw in films. He wasn’t any kind of ninja, he just had more practice at stoushes than these lads, but once the two he’d thrown at each other at the start were back up, the odds were stacked against him, and while his greater experience helped, it wasn’t enough to keep him from taking a pummeling. A lucky punch from one of them split his lip, and another glanced off the corner of his eye hard enough that it would probably blacken up nicely the next day.

One of the lads gave a squawk that Harry would probably have a laugh about later, when he wasn’t trying to not get his ribs broken. He spared a glance in the direction of the noise, and saw the girl in the pink hijab had jumped on the guy’s back and was smacking him in the head, while he tried to protect his head with his arms. 

Another strange noise came from behind him, and he twisted, keeping his fists up. One of them was right behind him, a beer bottle in his hand, the bottom shattered off. It would have made a hell of a mess of Harry’s back if it had connected, but the guy was laughing uncontrollably, and twitching as if… As if he was being tickled mercilessly, even though there was no one there. 

Harry sniffed the air and sure enough, underneath the pall of sweat and beer that hung around his opponents, there was the sharp, tingly scent of magic. 

Before he could seek out the source, three burly men in jackets with ‘Security’ printed on the sleeves and backs stomped up. The drunk boys all protested their innocence - they’d been minding their own business when some crazy guy (presumably meaning Harry) had assaulted them. All of them. At once. 

The security men not having come down in the last shower, took in the broken glass bottle, and the girl who was righting her scarf with shaking hands, and rounded the drunken arses up. One guy with glasses and a tattoo on the shaved side of his head looked like he was thinking about taking Harry with them, but in the end just said, “You want to leave this sort of thing to us, boyo, or you’ll wind up on assault charges yerself.”

Harry nodded and did his best to look chastened. (And not at all like he’d already Obliviated his way out of several sets of charges in the last year or so.)

“All right, Kenda?” a too-familiar voice asked somewhere behind him. He turned around and, sure enough, there was Draco Malfoy, talking to the pink-hijab girl. He was standing close enough to be lightly touching her shoulder, but not enough to crowd her.

“I swear to fuck,” the girl, Kenda, said in a surprisingly deep voice for someone so small, “If anyone tries to give me the ‘That’s why you shouldn’t talk to strange men’ talk, I will fuck them up. I will.” Her voice, thick with a London accent, shook as much as her hands did, with a combination of anger and fear that Harry knew all too well from his years at Hogwarts.

“That sounds immensely unhelpful,” Draco said, his own voice soothingly brusque. “What are you supposed to do to prevent strange men from talking to _you_? Anyway,” he said, glancing at Harry and tone turning snide, “At least you had a _hero_.” His sneer was as full of disdain as ever, although the impact was possibly lessened by Harry’s sudden realisation that in addition to the eyeliner he’d noticed earlier, Draco was wearing _lipgloss_.

Harry wasn’t sure whether that was his cue to approach, or to fuck off, but he wanted to check that Kenda was all right before leaving her to Draco’s tender mercies, so he walked up to them. His nostrils flared with the tang of magic around Draco, and pieces like the uncontrollable laughter and the sudden confused wandering slotted into place. Draco smirked at him, like the smug arsehole he was.

Kenda looked at Harry and jabbed a finger (pink nail polish to match her scarf) in his direction. “You,” she said, “are a _crazy bastard_.”

“It’s been said,” Harry agreed, because it _had_ been said. It had been said loudly and often, even before he became a werewolf with anger management issues. “Although you were the one who jumped that guy from behind, so maybe it takes one to know one.”

Kenda laughed at that. “Fair shout. I’m not really the damsel in distress type. Kenda,” she said, and stuck out her hand. 

“Harry,” he replied, accepting the handshake.

He wasn’t all that surprised to see Jono hurrying up to them, unbranded takeaway coffee cups in hand and two other people, similarly burdened, in tow. “Oh my god, what happened?” he demanded breathlessly as he came up the hill. 

“Trust you lot to show up fifteen minutes late with Starbucks,” Kenda said to them.

“If _only_ there were Starbucks!” Jono said, “The best we could do was generic filter. At least the rest of us can kill the taste with booze.”

“You’re all heart,” Kenda said. “We had a bit of a run in with some Likely Lads, but Harry here took the worst of i-”

“Oh my god!” Jono shouted over her as he noticed Harry. “Mike! Mike, this is him! Look at him, didn’t I tell you?”

The guy standing behind Jono was presumably Mike. He was tall, built like a rugby player or a Beater. His jaw-length hair was in twists, and he looked to be wearing Kenda’s pink nail polish. “All right Jono,” he said placidly. “I see what you mean, but maybe don’t freak the guy out with the pointing and the shouting, yeah?” His accent was a match for Jono’s, and Harry wondered how long they’d known each other. 

There were introductions all around, mostly conducted by Kenda, with excited interjections from Jono. The tall one was Mike, who really was a rugby player (“He plays half-back for the Wolverhampton Wolves, but we think Gloucester might pick him up!”), and was the fourth flatmate. The other woman, who was wearing jeans, a black jacket and boots, was Sandy, (“She’s an optometrist!”) who was Mike’s girlfriend. (“And of course you’ve met Dragon!” - in a sly tone.) 

Sandy and Mike each pulled a hip-flask of Jack Daniels out of their jackets and topped off all the coffees except Kenda’s. (Harry still didn’t know where Jono was stashing his phone, and was relieved to see he at least wasn’t also hiding a bottle in there somewhere.) Harry was offered a drink directly from the flask, which he accepted, hiding his wince as the alcohol hit his split lip. 

The six of them cut up the hill, to where another group of fire dancers had halted the procession. The May Queen stood, still and regal, as flaming stave ends whirled perilously close to her. The Green Man joined in the dance, leaping over a stave that was swept towards his legs before ducking under a torch. He wove and ducked through the fire dancers, engaging briefly with each one to whoops and cheers from the crowd before returning to the May Queen and giving her a twirl that made her gown billow out, showing off the heavy embroidered flowers that decorated it. 

Harry somehow ended up moving along with Draco’s group of friends. It was strange but almost… nice to have to pretend that their shared history didn’t exist, that they were just strangers who met by coincidence, that Draco had never tried to murder anyone, that Harry had never almost succeeded. 

They passed one of the bonfires, and Harry tried not to notice how the flickering light washed Draco’s skin golden and warm. The fine silver webbing of scars across Draco’s chest brought him up short, sent an icy shiver down his spine, a lasting testimony to the consequences of Harry’s impulses. 

“Some kind of car accident or something,” Mike said to him, passing a hip-flask low to avoid it being too obvious. “The scars, I mean.”

All Harry could do was nod. It wasn’t like he could correct the guy. This was Draco’s story for something otherwise inexplicable (although being attacked by an armed classmate wasn’t inherently magical) and Harry was obscurely grateful for the lie. 

“Have you known him long?” Harry asked, to deflect the conversation along less personal lines.

“Couple of years.” Mike topped up his coffee cup from the hip-flask before slipping the flask back into his jacket. “He’s a bit weird, but a good lad. Bit of a laugh, you know? I don’t know where he comes up with all his _magic_ stuff, but it’s dead funny.”

Harry felt a bit gormless nodding again, but there wasn’t much he could say. And to be honest, he didn’t feel very chatty. The sting of his lip and the dull ache of bruises developing along his ribs and around his eye soothed the angry itch that always plagued him these days, and the excited, cheerful buzz of the crowd was kind of restful. 

A few moments later Jono called Mike over to him, apparently to settle something between himself and Kenda, and Draco dropped back to walk with Harry. Harry was a little worried about the fact that after just an hour or so, he was becoming able to pick out Draco’s scent from a crowd.

“Your sense of smell’s sharp, isn’t it?” Draco asked, as though he could hear what Harry was thinking. 

Harry just looked at him, reluctant to say anything to give himself away, even if Draco had already worked it out. 

“The textbooks all said that there was no real way to tell if someone was a werewolf, but there was always something not quite human about Greyback and his chums, the way they used to tilt their heads as if they were hearing something no one else could hear.” Draco looked as if something was coming together in his head. “They were sniffing the air, weren’t they?” 

“Well, most of the textbooks were written by people who wanted to hunt werewolves down, so it’s probably not that surprising if some information was withheld.”

“Ah,” Draco said, “Yes, I suppose I hadn’t thought of it that way, werewolves seeing themselves as the prey, not the predator.”

Ahead of them, there was a little scuffle that resulted in Mike heaving Jono up and onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, while Kenda laughed at him, and Sandy shook her head. 

“They’re a good bunch,” Harry observed, indicating them with a nod of his head. 

Draco smiled. “Yes. I’ve been rather lucky, all things considered.”

“How are your parents doing?” 

Draco glanced at him sharply, but it was a genuine question. Lucius Malfoy held no terrors for Harry now, and he’d got on surprisingly well with Narcissa the times they had met at Andromeda’s before the older Malfoys had quietly left the country. 

“Well enough, I suppose. Father chafes at the limited opportunities their new abode offers, but has managed to involve himself in the local politics, which cheers him up, and Mother enjoys the peace.” It was carefully phrased to avoid giving Harry any clues about where they actually were, but Harry wasn’t trying to find out particularly (unlike the Ministry, who were quite keen that Lucius should be located), so he let it go. 

They were getting near the top of the hill. At some point the rest of the structures at the summit had been lit up, a series of pieces of arch describing a sheltered area without ever actually connecting to each other, with a stage at the front and centre. One of the drumming groups was set up nearby, their beat speeding up, becoming more insistent, as the procession approached its end. On the stage a single dancer, in classic ballet costume, tutu and all, but green from her hair to her slippers, ‘saw’ the procession approaching. A pipe started playing, the high notes tripping speedily around the solid beat of the drums, and the dancer leapt and danced across the stage. 

Ballet had never held much interest for Harry, but the single figure on the stage was mesmerising. The whole crowd, thousand of people, seemed to be holding their breaths.

Behind her someone in white ran across the stage, launching into a series of flips, and the crowd cheered. 

Suddenly the stage was alive with people in green and people in white, moving in combinations of classic ballet moves and acrobatics. It was vibrant and energetic and, although there was nothing explicitly sexual about any of it, it was somehow sensual. 

More pipes joined the music and people clapped along to the drumbeat, and Harry was strangely conscious of Draco, a warm, half-naked presence at his side. Some of the crowd started to dance in small groups, including Sandy, Jono and Kenda. There wasn’t anything elegant or sophisticated about their dancing, just the joy of moving together for the sake of moving. It was a specifically Muggle kind of magic, to weave a spell like this. Sandy grabbed Mike by the wrist and he joined in, mostly just jumping up and down. They waved and beckoned Harry and Draco over to join them. Harry hesitated. He wanted to but, ridiculous though it was, there was something a little intimidating about letting his guard down that much in front of Draco Malfoy, of all people. 

From the look Draco gave him, he was thinking along the same lines. Then he shrugged, the bright light from the stage - where the dancers had been joined by the drummers, pipers and some fiddlers - sliding across the roll of his shoulder like silk. A smile - untainted by malice or superiority - bright and genuine, spread across his face and he ran to join his friends, knowing, _knowing_ that there was no way Harry could resist a challenge like that. Draco hurled himself onto Sandy’s back and nearly got himself thrown over her shoulder before she realised it was him. 

Harry’s approach was slower, but everyone cheered, and he started jumping up and down with Mike, while trying not to stare at the way Draco’s hips moved once he was on his own two feet. 

The atmosphere was charged, and the music got louder and louder and faster and faster as they carried the crowd away, until something changed. It took Harry a minute to notice, but a mournful note had entered the music. The drums beat as they had been before, the fiddles were the same, the pipes - ah, there it was. One high-pitched flute, maybe the one from the beginning of the music, was playing the tune with sad, falling notes that unsettled Harry deeply, although he couldn’t have said why. 

On the stage, the dancers parted, and the first dancer tiptoed through the centre, making sweeping bows as she made her way to the front of the stage. Behind her came the May Queen and the Green Man, her hand resting on his. Around Harry the crowd cheered and shouted and waved their arms, but something solemn in their faces chilled Harry.

The Green Man had taken off the long coat he’d been wearing for the procession. Beneath it he wore only loose woven trousers, and a thick golden torc around his neck. His skin was green, with celtic designs either tattooed or painted all over his chest and arms, and onto his back. The pair turned to face each other. The Green Man took the torc from around his neck and inclined his head. The May Queen took his face gently between her hands, leaning in to press her lips to his forehead for a moment before taking the torc from him. The crowd went nuts, probably expecting something at least borderline erotic. 

Harry’s heart hammered in his throat, as he realised for the first time that this was all too familiar. He flinched as someone touched his shoulder lightly, and he realised he was standing stock-still amid a raucous crowd. Draco looked puzzled and genuinely concerned. 

On stage, the Green Man knelt before the May Queen. The crowd loved it, from the hooting and hollering they were doing. The drums pounded louder and harder than before, barely all keeping to a beat, and the pipes and fiddles sounded frenzied. All except that one doleful pipe, that struck like an arrow to Harry’s heart, pinning him in place. 

The noise built and built, and Harry thought the lights were getting brighter too, the impact of it all overwhelming until, abruptly, it all stopped. 

The lights went dark.

The musicians were silent.

The dancers were still. 

Around the park the bonfires went dark, one by one.

There were thousands of people in the park, yet they all went quiet astonishingly quickly, the cheers and shouting dwindling to a hushed murmur. The quiet was eerie. 

Someone in the crowd let out a howl and Harry couldn’t quell the urge to answer, although it probably wasn’t all that noticeable among the painted people, and the horns and what have you.. 

That damn pipe started to play again. So quiet at first it was barely audible, its sad refrain - eerily reminiscent of the Phoenix’ song - floated out over the hushed crowd. 

In the dark, he felt Draco grab hold of his hand, gripping it rather more tightly than would be usually be considered reasonable. 

On the stage, a soft, diffuse light started to rise. 

Harry looked down at Draco’s hand in his, and squeezed back.

Yeah. The story was familiar, all right.

The light sharpened to a single point, where the May Queen stood, head bowed over the torc in her hands. At her feet the Green Man lay dead. 

Horrifyingly familiar.

The light went out again, and the crowd began to buzz with shock and confusion. 

In the distance a drum beat once. Then again. Again and again until it was picking out a slow steady beat. People began to turn around, looking for the source of the sound, even though there was no way anyone could possibly see the drummer in the dark. 

They _did_ see one of the bonfires in the park burst back to life. A few moments later, another. And another, until there were fires burning merrily all around the park again. 

The pipe’s tune picked up in pace as the fires appeared. More drums joined in, rather more cheerful than they had been before. It was all pretty damn surreal. 

When the spotlight on-stage came on again, the crowd roared. The Green Man was on his knees once more, the tattoo figures gone. The May Queen had shed the heavy embroidered gown, and was wearing a simple white slip of a dress with a few flowers at the neck and hem. She slipped a torc back around the Green Man’s neck, this one light and thin, though it still shone golden in the light. The Queen took the Green Man’s hands and brought him to his feet, and this time her kiss was full on the lips. 

All of the stages lights came up at once, revealing that the green people and the white people had been joined by the various groups they had met along the way. The dancing this time was wilder, more carefree, and accompanied by quite a lot of snogging. 

Relief and wasted adrenaline made Harry a little weak at the knees. 

A wild surge of joyous energy seemed to sweep through the crowd and a number of the performers, especially the red folk, ran through the crowd, cheering and yelling. There was shouting, and laughter, and a few people crying. and everyone pressed that bit closer to the stage. Complete strangers hugged each other like long-lost relatives. Mike picked Jono up and swung him around, bumping into Draco, who would have fallen over if Harry hadn’t caught him. There was a moment of fumbling and stumbling, which left both upright, but pressed so close together that Harry could see a fine starburst of gold around Draco’s pupils that he’d never noticed before. 

They stood, locked together in a frozen tableau while the crowd ebbed and flowed around them.

Harry had no idea who moved first, but suddenly his lips were meeting Draco’s in a fierce kiss. 

Once, he might have tried biting at Draco’s lips in revenge for Draco doing the same to him, but he was far too careful for that now.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Kenda and Mike hand over their bet money to Jono.

“Shall we find somewhere with fewer eyes, Potter?” Draco asked once he’d stopped kissing, and Harry could only really nod because doing much more than that was a little too much like thinking for his tastes.

Draco managed to drag him off down the hill to the trees, and there were a few awkward seconds while Draco pulled out his wand (again, Harry was not going to wonder where the hell Draco had been hiding that, the same as he wasn’t going to wonder where Jono had been hiding his mobile) and cast a few spells aimed at privacy.

The drums faded to the point that Harry suspected that only he could hear it, a cheerful beat that thrummed in his ribcage, out of tempo with his own heart.

Then Draco started kissing him again, gripping his hair and tugging roughly and it was messy and insane and Harry was barely able to fucking breathe between kisses.

He had a feeling he wasn’t meant to.

Draco growled and nipped Harry’s lower lip between his teeth, and Harry damn near howled again. This was not how he’d expected to spend his night but he’d be damned if he was going to let that stop him.

Draco pinned his wrists against the tree and really Harry could have freed himself easily. He was used to fighting, and he worked out a lot to burn off the extra energy, but Draco kept holding him there and Harry relaxed a little into the grip.

“Good boy,” Draco whispered in his ear, and Harry snorted, because that was not what you said to a werewolf. But the line somehow worked in the right now, in the aftermath of watching the Green Man die and then be reborn and everything that meant to Muggles and really meant to Harry who’d lived through it all himself.

Around them other people, probably with the same idea as them, moved through the undergrowth beneath the trees, the sounds of murmurs and soft laughter, mouths meeting, and the occasional curse from people meeting Nature in its pricklier forms, but Draco’s privacy charms held, and no one spared a glance for Harry Potter pressed willingly up against a tree.

“Are you with me, Potter?” Draco asked, voice hesitant for all that his body was pretty firmly holding Harry in place against the tree trunk.

Harry nodded. “Yeah. Think I am.”

Draco looked at him carefully, and he must have seen something that confirmed Harry’s words because he nodded. “Good. Don’t go anywhere.”

He might be willing to let himself be shoved around a bit, but he was no one’s pushover, least of all Draco Malfoy’s. 

“You going to stop me?” Even in the darkness beneath the trees he could see Draco light up in answer to the challenge.

Before he said a word, Draco’s response was pretty conclusive. He kicked Harry’s feet apart and leaned in to press a thigh between Harry’s. Pressed between the rough bark of the tree and Draco’s long, strong body was no bad place to be. The moon and the adrenaline from earlier both surged in his blood, and he pushed against Draco with his whole body, his whole being, and Draco (always, _always_ ) pushed back. 

“Oh, I think I can manage something, Potter,” Draco said, one hand letting go of Harry’s wrists and sliding down Harry’s chest with intent and promise. 

  
  


The sun rose on Beltane, the first day of Summer, gently touching dew-laden grass, the still-warm embers of the previous night’s bonfires, and Harry Potter’s bare arse.

Harry wasn’t sure which particular discomfort woke him; his bladder was full, he was pretty sure there was something with too many legs crawling up his inner thigh, and he was apparently lying on hundreds of sticks. He also had his nose buried in someone’s armpit, but in the grand scheme of things, that seemed like a secondary concern. 

He started by brushing his thigh and was at least a bit reassured to find that the sensation of movement was caused by nothing more sinister than morning dew in his leg hair. (Wasn’t that supposed to be good for the complexion or something? Was he going to have really nice legs for the rest of the year?) He shifted his hip to try to dislodge the sharpest of the sticks.

“For the love of Merlin, Potter, _will you stop wriggling_ ,” Draco Malfoy’s voice rumbled from the chest beneath his ear. 

The events of the night before came back with a rush, and Harry sat up abruptly, to which both Draco and the sticks responded by poking him sharply. 

“ _Ow_.” He pouted at Draco, who rolled his eyes and reached for his wand, renewing the Charms that had kept them comfortably warm and separate from the ground the night before. 

Draco settled onto his back with his arms crossed behind his head and contemplated the (somewhat tatty-looking by day) leaves above them. “I feel like I should somehow have known it would one day come to this,” he said. 

Harry shrugged, and flopped himself down across Draco’s chest. “Fuck off, Malfoy,” he mumbled into Draco’s clavicle. It probably wasn’t very convincing. “I hope you put those privacy Charms back up. I haven’t had enough coffee to deal with talking my way out of Public Indecency charges.”

“You haven’t had any coffee at all, Potter.”

“ _I know_ ,” Harry said, and if it had (just barely the tiniest _hint_ of) a whine to it, he would blame the wolf for it.

Draco flicked a fingernail against Harry’s ear and said, “Pathetic,” but his hand rested on Harry’s head a moment later and started stroking his hair, so Harry decided it wasn’t worth taking offence over. 

It felt weird to just let it ride, though, so Harry mumbled, “Berk,” just for the principle of the thing. 

Harry had what was probably, given the circumstances, a rather peculiar sense of contentment and peace, something much deeper than the usual post-brawl respite from the wild beast in his blood. He couldn’t remember feeling this calm since he’d been bitten, let alone this close to the full moon. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a similar respite from his bladder.

Getting up from the ground was not the most graceful maneuver he’d ever pulled, and resulted in no small amount of cursing and hitting from Draco. (“What is _wrong_ with you?”)

“I just really need a piss,” Harry eventually said, once he had his jeans in hand. “I’m going to find a nice discreet bush somewhere and relieve myself, and then I’ll be right back, so calm the fuck down, would you?” He could quietly Disapparate home if he had to, but he wasn’t going to be the one back down first. He was half listening for the crack of Draco Disapparating away as he pissed, then pulled his jeans on (then hopped about for a moment pulling his boxers out of one leg, putting them on and then putting the jeans back on, but if no one saw him, it didn’t count) and headed back to where they’d slept.

Draco had managed to get himself back into his ridiculous (and ridiculously hot, dammit) leather pants, and apparently conjured up (or possibly unShrunk) a soft-looking grey cardigan-type top. Even his smudged eyeliner looked unfairly mussed and attractive. 

Harry was pretty sure that he looked like he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards (more so than usual) - although from Draco’s expression, ‘Dragged Through a Hedge Backwards’ was a look that did it for him. Harry wasn’t one to judge, least of all when something was working in his favour.

“Right,” Draco said, flicking his fingers through his hair so it fell out of the spikes of the night before and into some kind of male model’s version of ‘Just Crawled Out Of Bed’. “Coffee,” he said, with determination. 

Harry shrugged and pulled his wand out. “Point Me Starbucks.” His wand tugged to the west, and he turned to see if Draco was coming with him. 

Draco stood with his arms folded and the sort of expression that Snape used to level at Neville. “The rumours that you were raised by wild animals suddenly becomes less far-fetched,” he drawled in the way that used to make Harry want to punch him in the mouth, and now made him want to find better occupations for Draco’s mouth. 

Instead of following either of those instincts, he folded his own arms (which had to be done a bit carefully with a wand in one hand) and raised his own eyebrows in what he hoped was a challenging fashion, and didn’t just make him look surprised. 

“For Merlin’s sake,” Draco responded, and for the first time Harry realised that the impossibility of leaving a challenge, even an unintentional one, unanswered went both ways. (Interesting. And possibly fun.) “Put on that scrap that’s masquerading as your shirt and I’ll show you where to get _real_ coffee around here.”

It _sounded_ disdainful, but the tone seemed to be disguising an olive branch, an offer to spend more time together, if Harry wanted it. Harry thought he might finally be learning to speak Malfoy. 

He decided to test his theory, and made a bit of a show of putting his shirt on, making sure to flex his pecs a little. 

Sure enough, Draco’s mouth said, “Urgh, you look a complete ragamuffin, what is _wrong_ with your hair, how does it even do that?” But he stepped in close, closer than he needed to, and gently finger-combed Harry’s hair into what Harry had to assume was some semblance of order. 

“‘Real’ coffee sounds good,” Harry offered. “If it lives up to the hype, I might have to come back some time.” It was maybe a bit much, a bit coy, or just not the right thing to say, but Harry was honestly surprised by how much he was enjoying Draco’s company, (not to mention his excellent handjob techniques) and he thought they might be able to at least spend time together again. (And he had no objections to mutual nudity again either.)

“It will be infinitely superior to anything you have experienced previously,” Draco said with actually quite a lot of haughtiness. “Of course you’ll be back.” 

Challenge and response. Harry snorted and pushed at Draco’s shoulder. Draco elbowed him in the side (of course the pointy git had pointy elbows), so Harry shoulder-barged him back. He braced for retaliation, but wasn’t prepared for sudden sharp sting on his arse. He leapt back, hand over the sting. Draco had produced his wand out of nowhere, and was smirking victoriously.

“You cheat!”

“I am merely using the tools at my disposal, Potter,” Draco said loftily (but his eyes were firmly fixed on Harry’s hand rubbing the sting on his arse). “Now, are you coming?”

“Fine. But given that we’ve had our hands on each other’s dicks, do you think you could manage to call me Harry?”

A faint but quite pretty blush spread over Draco’s cheeks, although he was obviously trying to pretend it wasn’t. ”I suppose I could try,” he said. “ _Harry_. Now, for the love of all things magical, can we go and get some coffee? I’m gasping.”

Harry executed what was probably a really crap bow. “After you. You can tell me how you’re going to explain it all to Jono.”

“Oh my stars, I shall honestly just Obliviate the lot of them,” Draco declared, as he waited for Harry to walk beside him, away from the park and into the bustling city.


End file.
